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IT Almost Used 1980s Horror Monsters

IT could have featured cameos from famous '80s movie monsters, according to director Andy Muschietti. One of the many abilities of IT’s central monster Pennywise is his ability to shape-shift and take on the form of other people and creatures, which he uses to play mind games and instill fear into his prey.

In the 2017 version of IT, Pennywise changes into forms designed to disturb each of The Losers’ Club in unique ways. For germaphobe Eddie, he takes on the guise of a diseased leper, and for Stan, he brings a creepy painting to life. In Stephen King’s novel, he took on many other forms too - including famous pop culture monsters like the shark from Jaws, Frankenstein’s Monster and Dracula.

With these unique abilities, it must have been tempting to include one or two famous creatures, and Muschietti confirms in an interview with Ain’t It Cool News the thought crossed his mind during development.

Obviously we considered that for a bit, but I wasn't too interested in bringing Freddy Krueger into the mix. I love the story and I love how Stephen King basically makes a portrait of childhood in the '50s. He's very genuine when he brings all the Universal Monsters to the repertoire of incarnation because that's what kids were afraid of. It would be a natural path to try to recreate that in the '80s, but I really wasn't too crazy about bringing stuff like Freddy Krueger into the story. I thought it was a bit too meta with New Line involved in the film. It's distracting and it didn't feel right, for some reason.

Instead, the director wanted to focus on the psychological fears of each of the kids, and make Pennywise’s various forms a little more personal.

I wanted to bring fears that were a little more layered and related to childhood trauma and more surprising in general. I think that Stephen King was open to that. When he saw the film I basically wrote a letter to him asking him for forgiveness for having taken so many licenses, especially with the many different incarnations of Pennywise. He said “Don't worry about it. All the changes are great!”

Given the 1980s setting, it definitely would have been a nice surprise to see familiar monsters like Freddy, Jason or Pinhead appear, but it feels like the director made the right call. Other than giving fans a brief hit of sweet nostalgia, it probably would have been distracting and taken audiences out of the movie.

That’s not to say part two couldn’t feature a famous monster or two, so long as such a cameo makes sense for the story. The next IT could go super meta and feature Pennywise turn into famous Stephen King villains like Christine, Cujo or The Green Goblin Truck from Maximum Overdrive, but as Andy Muschietti said, that meta approach is probably best avoided.